US foreign policy is about making money for military firms: Analyst

The United States foreign policy has always served the interests of the military-industrial complex and that is why President Donald Trump is actively trying to increase the Pentagon’s budget while also pressing allies to spend more on defense, says an American analyst.

Keith Preston, director of Attackthesystem.com, made the remarks while discussing reports that Washington was drawing plans to require allies with American troops stationed in their countries to pay for the deployment.

Under White House direction, the Trump administration plans to ask Germany, Japan and eventually any other country hosting US troops pay the full price of American soldiers deployed on their soil, plus 50 percent or more for the privilege of hosting them.

“It is an interesting relationship because the United States on one hand pays the military bills and provides for the military defense of these countries in Asia and in Europe and also at the same time the Americans use this position… to maintain political hegemony,” Preston told Press TV on Sunday.

Washington’ pressure on Germany, the UK and France to follow Trump in abandoning the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was one of the examples of this trend, the analyst said.

The Trump administration’s plan to maintain several hundred troops in Syria despite a promise to evacuate the country was another hint at this behavior, according to Preston.

John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, said Sunday that the US was in talks with the UK and France to prolong foreign military presence in Syria in order to prevent what he called a possible presence of the Daesh terror group.

“So clearly this is a move by President Trump to simply generate revenue for the United States and for the US military budget,” he said. “Much of what the American politics is about is simply making money for the so-called military-industrial complex.”

He said while the US military budget was around $700 billion annually, the military industrial complex’s real revenue was difficult to calculate “because there is so man different channels of revenue.”